The Path to AAA Games

Gamasutra has up a feature discussing an E3 discussion session haunted by some illustrious names in game design. The topic of the panel was The Path to Creating AAA Games. Hosted by Carly Staehlin, the panel featured Matt Firor, Todd Howard, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Tim Willits, and Will Wright. From the article: "'My biggest failure was Quake 3,' Willits said. 'The game offered perfect multiplayer for hardcore players. In fact, they're still playing it. But the more casual gamers, and other people who actually have money, found playing next to impossible.'"

Comments

Re:Where did this term come from?

[chazmo]

Having recently worked at SCEA, the term is commonly used at Sony to indicate how many copies they sell or intend to sell. If a game sells over a million copies, it is an "A" game. If it sells two million, it's "AA" and so on. With the sales of the latest GTA, Rockstar raised the bar, so now we have "AAAA" games (over four million sold). Granted, as of March 2005, GTA: San Andreas has sold over 12 million.